


not here looking for absolution

by orphan_account



Category: Saturday Night Live RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:46:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A roadtrip that's short in length but long in the telling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not here looking for absolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annakovsky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annakovsky/gifts).



> I am pretty concerned this exists and is this long, because it proves that I can actually write something over three thousand words and I'm really worried that people will start to expect it of me more often.
> 
> However, I basically had to because I got that stupid inspiration thing and it wouldn't leave me alone so I thought why not do it for Yuletide!!! And that is how we came to be here. Merry Christmas!

It’s late – or more accurately, way past late and into ridiculous when he opens the door to her. He can see she’s been crying, her arms folded tight to her chest and the muscles in her forearms a dark crease.

“Hey, Meyers,” her voice scratches out.

“What happened, Aims?” he utters her quiet nickname, the one he hears her parents use, probably straying close to taboo even though it feels like maybe she needs to hear it.

Instead of answering she breathes deep, he watches the air fill her lungs and whoosh out again in a sigh, deflating her body before she steps forward and buries her face in his shirt, fabric muffling her breaths. His arms slide around her, chin on the top of her head, and he listens to her shaking breaths under the dim lights of the hallway. Her hands bunch into his shirt at his ribs and sternum, anchoring her to him, then she pulls back to look up at his face.

“I don’t know if we broke up or what but this fucking sucks.”

He tries not to think _should have seen that one coming_ and instead thumbs the jut of her spine through her thin jumper. “Come inside, I’m making coffee.”

Nodding, she slips past him, her fingers lingering as they slide past his wrist, and settles herself into the corner of his couch. She murmurs her thanks when he passes her a mug, and warms her hands around it.

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what happened?”

“Nope. I want to not think about it until I can think about it again.”

After he figures out exactly what she means, he nods. “Okay. Can I do anything?”

She scrunches up her nose, sets her coffee down. “I don’t know Seth, I just... can we go somewhere or something? I just want to get out of the city for a while.”

He would take her to the Moon if she asked him to. “If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want.”

 

 

So they drive. He starts his car up with the dashboard clock reading ten to five, and Amy saying _drive until I tell you to stop_. And that’s exactly what he does. The sun rises behind them, a watery grey sky fading into a clear blue, and he drives. They pull up once to get terrible burgers that he watches her pick at, throwing the morsels to sparrows, and once to just sit, quiet in a field, the grass damp beneath them. A bird of prey flies overhead, wings flapping before it slides smooth across a backdrop of blue and white.

“You know I won’t press you, but if you decide you need to talk I’ll listen whenever you want.”

She smiles a thin, pale smile, and pats his hand. “Let’s keep going.”

 

 

They’re about two minutes from sundown when his eyes flick to the petrol gauge. “We should get gas. Anything you need?”

She shakes her head, studying him, the crease of a smile beginning in the corner of her mouth. He wants to ask her what she’s thinking about, why her eyes are suddenly so blue.

“Okay,” is all that comes out, though, and he stops the car under the heavy, pallid glow of a gas station’s fluorescent lights, kills the engine. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes, then.”

“Pumps are on prepay,” she replies, looking out the window.

 

On his way back to the car he drops a bag of Maltesers through the open window into her lap, and he hears the door open as he lifts the pump off its hook. When he turns around she’s right there, that same look on her face again, a sudden switch of character that only seems to happen when she’s staring him in the face. Silently, she fists some of his shirt into one of her hands and pulls his mouth down to hers, her lips insistent. Not entirely sure what’s happening, he kisses her back as fiercely as he can with a gas pump in his hand, the other braced against her hip as her tongue licks into his mouth. When she pulls back she’s flushed red, something he hardly ever sees her do, and smoothes out his shirt with the spread of her fingers, still not saying anything.

“All that for a bag of Maltesers? What’ll you do for dinner?” he asks, trying to keep this a joke. A light hums above them.

She slaps him with the hand still resting on his chest, a swift whack that echoes through his ribs. “Asshole.”

He watches her face, sees her sadness and bewilderment return – whether it’s at him or everything else or both, he doesn’t know. But it hurts him too, he realises, to see her like this. He just wants the Amy back that he recognises – her cackling laugh and smirking eyes, the one who does her best impression of sunshine personified as often as he takes a breath. This Amy is different, quiet and guarded, and he doesn’t know what to do to bring the old one back.

“I’m sorry, Poehler,” he says softly, his fingers catching her arm and sliding to her wrist.

“No, I’m sorry,” she says in a strange, gruff voice. “Let’s just forget it.”

He shakes his head. “We haven’t slept in ages, I think we need to find a motel, okay?”

They get back in the car and thankfully there’s a motel not far up the road, respectable-looking and almost empty.

 

Amy says _just get a single_ as they enter reception, and nothing more until they finally get their keys, her eyes on the old guy behind the desk the whole time.

“Shit it’s dark now,” she comments mindlessly, looking up at the spread of stars above them. As they head down the complex looking for their room, shadows lurch tall behind them, and somewhere beyond the sickly glow of the lamp outside their door, an owl hoots. He feels Amy close at his back.

She clears her throat. “So I know this is irrational, but I also know how horror movies go – are we gonna die here, Seth? That dude in reception looked like he could give us a once-over with a chainsaw.”

He snorts, feels the familiar tone of a laugh threaded through her voice. It’s comforting to know it’s still there (even though realistically he knows for a person like her being sad is physically impossible for long periods of time and she has to bounce back eventually. Right?).

 

The bed is too small, really, for two platonic (completely platonic, nothing else to see here) friends who are both possibly-single and have spent too much time together for the length they’ve known each other. But he’s exhausted and she’s already pulling off her shirt to crawl into the left side of the bed – weird how that works out, since he sleeps on the right – and fumbling around under the covers to get her jeans off.

“You know, the modesty is cute but I feel like we kinda steamrolled past that after the first quick change we did together.”

She stops fumbling. “Shut up, Seth.” Her jeans are tossed to the floor, immediately forgotten, as she nestles in, her windblown hair matting into the pillow.

He follows suit, too tired to think about cleanliness and how many people have slept here before, how far away he needs to stay so their elbows don’t touch. He should be more worried, he’s sure, rather than okay with it. Isn’t this what people worry about all the time in romantic comedies? Though he finds himself wondering, too, whether the stupid rule applies to actors or not.

 

Nothing happens. They fall asleep within minutes of each other and don’t wake up for near on nine hours. It’s just after six when he feels Amy stir next to him, a stretch running all the way through her as she turns toward him, yawning.

“Morning,” she says, her voice quiet and cracking from sleep, then closes her eyes again.

“Morning, Poehler,” he replies, watching her lashes flutter. “Don’t fall asleep on me again, partner, I thought this was a roadtrip.”

He can’t help grinning when he sees her frown, still dozing. “So it is.”

 

 

She drives, comfortable on the highway, and they stop for breakfast at a questionable diner with peeling signage and almost toxic coffee. She pushes at a sad-looking bagel with her finger before shaking her head. “I can’t do it. I know it makes me a snobby New Yorker (he can even hear the accent in the name, possibly for effect – actually, probably for effect) but this is the worst. Can we find somewhere in the next town?”

He nods with an answer that’s basically a formula by now: “Anything you want.”

 

 

There’s decent coffee and halfway decent food forty minutes away, and she stares out into the wide expanse of Middle America as she taps sugar into her cup.

“What are we doing?”

He shrugs. “Eating breakfast.”

Her eyebrow arches. “I mean, why did you humour me on this trip, Seth? What did you think you were gonna get out of it?” She doesn’t sound angry at him, simply curious, but he still feels uncomfortable. He could tell her what this is manifesting to – some stupid quest to win her heart or make her see the light or whatever else makes it sound like a noble knight’s pursuit. It’s just madness though, obviously, dressed up in shining robes and armour. Pathetic. So he keeps his thoughts to himself and gives her a half-truth instead.

“I just... wanted to make you feel better, I guess.”

She slumps a bit, apparently satisfied, and he feels the edge of her shoe come to rest near him on his side of the booth. She looks out of the window again, lets out a long sigh. “We should go back.”

“We should.”

Neither of them make it sound like something they want to do, it seems to serve just as an observation – yes, maybe they should leave because it’s Monday and they’re supposed to be at work soon, but it doesn’t feel like a necessity. Or something they’re actually planning on doing.

“Let’s call in sick and keep going. Let’s find booze. Let’s get weed, do you know anyone who has weed? Let’s just go to L.A.,” Amy rattles off, barely taking a breath.

He looks into the dregs of his cappuccino, and he knows he can’t let her down. A pathetic white knight on a donkey of a steed. “Why not?”

She grins, wide and bright. “Man, Seth, I love you. This is so awesome.”

Trying not to give three particular words in her reply more meaning than a passing remark about his willingness to bend to her ideas, he drinks the grainy bits at the bottom of his cup to hide his smile.

“I feel like booze and weed has officially topped our to-do list,” he says afterward, watching her grin again.

“We should probably make some calls.”

 

 

 

They find weed, through some elaborate phone tree miracle, and after picking it up from some cousin of a friend of six other friends, they stop at a seedy side-of-the-road liquor store to buy tequila and wine at her request. His stomach silently roils at that choice, neither of them bringing up particularly fond memories, but Amy’s got an almost wicked smile on her face after she pays the cashier and he doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardise it.

 

 

Seth drives again, gaze alternating between the road and Amy’s busy, deft fingers rolling portly joints like the pro she is, cursing violently when she loses a little weed out the side. He watches her tongue flicking out to run along the paper and flashes back to the night before; remembers greyish lights and the smell of petrol, and swallows. He wonders when that topic will come back up.

After a while he stops himself from thinking about it and concentrates on driving, the road long and black in front of them; the wheel warm beneath his hands. He’s soon snapped out of his silent daze by the _thwick_ of a lighter. Amy grins at him with a joint between her lips, then closes her eyes and sucks in deep.

“You’re _kidding_ ,” he says, incredulous.

She just shakes her head, cracks the window and lets her puff of smoke spill out into the car’s slipstream.

“You’re the one going to jail for this,” he warns, not even trying to sound serious.

“Technically, your money means it’s your weed, buddy. I just won’t pass a drug test for a few weeks.”

“I hate you.”

“You don’t, but that’s a nice sentiment.”

 

He refuses to drive baked, so they stop right beside the next motel they find and hotbox his car, hoping that the owners don’t come out and ask why two thirty-somethings are getting stoned just beyond their carpark.

She laughs for what feels like hours at almost everything he says; a steady, quiet cackle that sets his insides onto a low burn, and she feels so close – the brush of the thin hairs of her arm near his, the width of her smile so close to his shoulder. He rubs two fingers into an eye and watches her stub the joint out, twisting it into their makeshift ashtray with her tiny fingers.

“How are we supposed to pay for a room like this?” he asks, glossing over the lack of discussion about how many rooms they’re paying for (it’s kind of obvious though really, one is cheaper than two, right?).

Amy looks at him. “Easy.”

“Whatever! You’re even higher than me.”

Defiant, she gets out of the car and wanders inside, returning a few minutes later with keys dangling from the bird she’s triumphantly flipping him.

 

 

They light up again in the room because it’s right down the back and halfway into a forest (or that’s what feels like to him) and he starts to feel brave. High and brave and so happy that she’s laughing and ribbing him and not sitting silent and curled into the corner of her car seat. He watches her face, the way her chest sinks when she breathes the smoke out, the place where her shirt’s ridden up enough to show the line of her hipbone under her skin. She watches the ceiling that’s partially obscured by their weed cloud, her eyes glazed over.

“Why did you kiss me at the gas station?” he asks, not able to contain the question anymore.

She looks at him and shrugs. “I wanted to. I was sad.”

“What would you say if I wanted to and I was sad?”

“That you were a liar. You’re not sad. Your face always smiles.”

“I was sad that you were sad.”

Cocking her head, she scrutinises him for a moment, one of her eyes scrunching up in the corner. Then a slow smile spreads across her face, small and content, and she doesn’t say anymore about it.

He wonders what she was thinking about, but has to stop when she pushes herself forward, bracing herself with a hand on his shoulder. Taking a drag on the joint, she leans away for a second to drop it in the ashtray, then leans back in, a breath from his face. Her finger taps his lips, then she lets her mouth open against his and he inhales, prickling with electricity everywhere he can feel her touching him, and then breathes out, smoke clouding between them.

“I like you, Meyers,” she says quietly, her voice low. She crawls over him, knees settling past his hips as she sits in his lap and holds his face in her little hands. “Your smile lines and your nose bend and your eye parts.”

He leans forward and kisses her properly, tastes the pull of her mouth and the smoke on her tongue and revels in the warm aliveness of her weight against him. She sighs and he feels her smile, her hands slipping from his face to find the hem of his shirt and haul it over his head.

His hands at her hips he pushes her back onto the bed, her legs linking around his lower back, heels digging in, and he delves his tongue into her mouth, stroking long and slow.

Amy is mostly hard elbows and knees and the softness that comes from a love of weed and a hatred for regular exercise, her thighs aren’t all muscle and heavy bone like some of the girls he’s known, and she isn’t just taut lines and smooth planes. It fills him with a strange kind of joy that she’s like this, no qualms or hang-ups or strange diets he hears so much about, just unabashedly herself and selfishly pushing his head further down and away from the place his lips are sucking on her neck.

She starts wriggling when he slows, restlessly pushing her hips up into his and scratching at his ribs with her nails so he licks down her chest, stopping to push her t-shirt up and away from her stomach, kisses along the waist of her pants.

High, this becomes more of an exercise in feeling; the way her legs hum over his shoulder and down his back, a heel burrowing into muscle and making him wince; the soaring pitch of her voice when his mouth closes over her clit; the rough drag of her hands in his hair. With the weed fogging up his brain, reality shifts out of focus, and they could be anywhere.

When she comes she laughs afterward, her gentle cackle warming him from the heart down. He wipes his mouth on the sheet (then immediately regrets it), lets her unzip his jeans and stroke him off with her mouth at his ear. They’re nonsense words, shit about how she can see the trees sharpening swords from their branches out the window and lines from a terrible radio play they found a few hours ago searching for music in the car – but whatever, he’s baked and just the fact that she’s got her hand around his dick is working for him.

 

 

They fall asleep stoned, his hand wrapped around her shirt at the hip – a fabric anchor to stop him drifting. He wakes sometime after five, sober and dry-mouthed and hoping the whole getting each other off thing isn’t going to make their friendship weird now.

“What are _you_ thinking about,” she asks, more statement than question. He starts, turning his gaze from the ceiling to her sleepy face, eyes half-hidden by her lashes.

“Food,” he lies, patting his stomach.

She nods vehemently, patting it too. “Pancakes.”

 

 

They drive into the night, not even sure what day it is anymore, and after the license plate game peters out from a lack of traffic, Amy turns to more creative ways to keep the trip interesting.

It turns out while he was in the middle of his phone tree business she’d slipped into a nearby bookstore-slash-gift shop and loaded up. Among the strange knickknacks and candy bars and inexplicably a Mills and Boon (“I only picked the one with a kickass lady protagonist, okay! And I wanted to see what would happen if I read you the dirty parts while you were driving...”) she had deigned to purchase something called _Do You Treat Her Right?_

He groans when she pulls it out and says she’s going to quiz him, and she’s the picture of innocence at his exasperation, sucking methodically on a Twizzler.

 

 

“So Seth, do you make sure your woman finishes first in the bedroom?”

“That can’t be a question.”

“It’s a question if you can’t see the page to prove me wrong because you’re driving,” she retorts.

He sighs. There is no dignified way from him to answer this, though he bets Amy could find one if she thought about it for about half a second (she’s always been quicker than him).

“Meyers, you have officially taken too long. You forfeit and lose the game.” She puts on an indistinguishable accent. “I say: for you, anything!”

“What the hell was that?” he asks, laughing.

“That was you being an old Jewish dude. Next question!”

 

 

Soon, the road either side of them is simply dust. The landscape is a barren sea of brown and gold, with the strip of dark road stretching narrow in front of them. Amy hums the X-Files theme and chugs her wine, wearing a t-shirt of his she found in the back seat. Her feet rest haphazard on the dash.

He feels like the earth is swallowing them whole.

 

 

“We need to find a bathroom,” she announces, and he hears the empty wine bottle rolling around on the floor somewhere.

There’s a gas station up ahead, broken down and caked in dust from the road and the desert, but there is a bathroom and Amy races off as soon as she sees it, leaving him to fill the car again. She returns smelling like soap and peppermint, holds out her hand to shake a couple from a tin into his hand.

“Please tell me you _bought_ these,” he says, chewing them. She doesn’t answer, kisses him instead, her mouth lingering around his bottom lip.

It feels a little like they’re at the end of the world out here, left only with dusty air and a self-help book titled _Do You Treat Her Right?_ Fitting, he thinks, for the both of them.

 

 

She falls asleep somewhere near Nevada, her features soft and her mouth slightly open. When she jolts awake suddenly, he smiles while she orients herself.

“Did you know you snore?”

“Do not,” she says hoarsely, running a hand through her hair. “Is there beer left? I need something wet, insert sex joke.”

“There’s a bottle of water somewhere that’s still half-full.”

“Water?! What am I, from the Dark Ages?”

“Actually if you were from the Dark Ages you probably _would_ be drinking a nice mead or ale,” he replies, trying to sound as bratty as possible.

“Shut up, Seth.”

 

 

They could have been driving for months, but it’s only been three days.

“Chapter Three: _How to make your lady feel special_...”

“ _Poehler_.”

 

 

When they get to Vegas, they get one last room to smoke the last of their weed and drink the last of their beer before hitting a casino with fifty dollars. (It seemed like a good idea at the time.)

They lose all of it, obviously, though Amy wins a few handfuls of quarters on a slot machine and they celebrate far more than necessary.

It’s raining when they leave, high on the glitz and bright lights and also drugs, and they run straight into the downpour, laughing hysterically.

Making out in the rain isn’t as romantic as Breakfast at Tiffany’s would have you believe, he can’t even tell what’s rain and what’s spit and he can just feel every part of him steadily getting wetter and wetter.

“This really isn’t doing it for me,” she says, a hand slicking back her dripping hair.

“You’re doing it for me,” he says, wanting to take the idiocy of that sentence back immediately. She snorts, apparently thinking the same thing, and wiggles a finger through one of his beltloops.

“Let’s go somewhere dry,” she says, pulling on him, and they run back to their hotel down the block, saturating the lobby floor on their way through.

Somewhere between the elevator and the shower he starts kissing her again, the coldness of her skin contrasting with the heat of her mouth. Their clothes peel wetly to the floor, sticking before they fall, and she crowds into him under the spray of hot water, trying to stave off the chill of the air.

The bathroom fills up with steam and warmth and the sound of her moans echoing off the tile, her hand bracing the wall and the rail (what it’s there for, he assumes, is disabled access – or exactly what they’re doing); he thrusts deep, his grip almost slipping on her warm wet skin, and she swears loudly, fingers suddenly digging hard into his shoulder.

He sucks on her collarbone, tastes complimentary hotel shampoo and water and Amy, and she shudders around him, clenching tight and hot and sweet. It’s enough to send him over the edge, his rhythm disappearing as his hips jerk erratically. He rests his forehead in the crook of her neck, breathing hard and listening to her heartbeat slowing from its frantic rabbit thump.

“Okay babe, it’s time to let me down now.” She pats his shoulder and it makes a wet slapping sound, prompting him to let her down gently so her feet touch the shower floor. She smiles sweetly at him, mopping stray wet hair back from his face and kissing him lightly. Then she gets out, wraps a towel around herself and disappears out the door, leaving him to turn the shower off and find a towel of his own. He thinks too much about the term of endearment as he remembers to brush his teeth and drink enough water so that he can wake up without having too much of a hangover to drive, then finds his boxers and gets into bed next to her for the last time. Amy’s already settled in facing his side, hair dampening the pillow, and he can’t quite read her expression.

“You okay?” he asks, not sure whether he should.

She scratches her nose, then hides her hand back under the covers again. “Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, Seth.”

He slides in beside her, watching her face.

“Thank you,” she says quietly, not looking entirely comfortable.

Corners of his mouth curling into a smile, he presses a kiss to her forehead, lingering at the warmth of her skin, the smell of her hair. When he pulls back she’s wearing a tiny grin, then she turns over to flick off the lamp.

He feels her sigh more than hears it, that long slow whoosh of breath released when it’s finally dark and quiet, and he shifts closer, lines his body up with hers. She wriggles back into him and he presses his nose into her damp hair, falling asleep almost immediately.

 

The headache is the first thing he notices when he wakes, a steady drilling throb behind his eyes, and he groans. Amy shifts beside him, sends an elbow into his ribs. “Be _quieter_ ,” she admonishes in a muffled half-whisper. He realises momentarily that her head is under her pillow, a hand holding it in place. His desire to piss her off suddenly outweighs the need to find painkillers, and he rolls nearer to her, his arm snaking across her stomach.

“But I wanted to sing,” he says childishly, and begins to dramatically clear his throat.

“Don’t you even _dare_ ,” is the vicious reply from beneath the pillow, and he feels her leg rise and her toes seek purchase above his knee. Trying to keep his balls intact, he grabs her wandering leg mid-thigh and pushes it away, lets his fingers run up a bit further, drawing little circles near the boundary of her underwear. She freezes, and he can feel the breath steal out of her body, watches her hand clench around the pillow. He pulls both away from her face, grins when she frowns at him.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks, running a finger along the edge of the fabric and watching her try to fight back the need to close her eyes, bite her lip.

“No,” she grits out, defeated. “Asshole.”

He slithers two fingers under the elastic and just studies her face, trying to catalogue what he can in case this never happens again. Sliding his fingers against her clit and into her he drops a kiss on her chest, and she looks at him, eyes glassy.

“So you do want to get in on this or...?” Her voice is a little breathless, and one of her hands closes around his wrist, pushes his fingers deeper.

He just shakes his head, and eventually makes her come harder than she ever has in recent, sober memory (he knows this only because she tells him, he’s not that much of an asshole).

Then they finally get up, check out of their hotel, walk to the car. It feels like the end of something.

 

 

Then they pass it, the Los Angeles sign makes his heart lift and constrict at the same time – his car has become a wasteland for takeout cartons and empty bottles of alcohol and similar things he’s glad to leave behind, but Amy’s solid presence all around him for the last few days is something he’s not willing to give up.

He knows already that there’s an emptiness looming, the threat beginning to steal in around his edges. He’s finding it hard to remember what it was like without her next to him, her staccato laugh and the steady beat of her heart under his fingers. Have they ever been apart? Has he ever known a moment that she hasn’t too, twined and coursing through all his sinew and veins and rushes of blood? Rationally, of course, there have been many, but after this trip it’s easy to forget, easy to pretend otherwise.

Sighing, Amy turns toward him, her gaze having settled out the window half an hour ago. “It’s gonna be weird going home.”

“It kinda feels like forever, right? Like this is just what we do.”

“We could join a commune,” she says, bringing her knees up to her chin.

“Wouldn’t you have to have like, five husbands if we did that? I’ve never thought of you as wanting five husbands.”

She rests her cheek on one of her knees, looks at him searchingly. “I don’t even know if I want any husbands.”

His fingers tap the steering wheel, tuneless and out of time, and he lets a breath out between his teeth. “Me neither. Husbands seem like hard work. Though I could totally get behind five wives.”

She slaps him, though she’s not really angry – she just hates it when he does that. “You’re an ass.”

“And you’ll do fine with a husband. Should we name some more facts, or are those enough?”

 

 

She does, too, in a year or so, when those days are a well-told story they wore out fast. It hurts, of course, that he bears witness to it, but at the same time he knows it would be worse if he didn’t see it at all.

Years later she says to him, “Oh my god, do you remember right before summer we went on that stupid road trip? I can’t believe Lorne didn’t fire us, we were such fucking assholes.”

“He probably should have, I came back with like, a full on mountain man beard.”

“You couldn’t grow a mountain man beard if your _entire life_ depended on it, Seth Meyers.” She shakes her head. “Man, I kind of wish we could do that again.”

“All of it?”

She looks at him in that way where he knows she’s pinpointed his exact meaning in a question, and grasps his hand. “Sometimes.”

That’s all he needs.


End file.
